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Zdeno Chara, Bruins making Penguins of the Red Wings

DETROIT -- Jarome Iginla has now seen both sides of it. The Bruins are in lockdown mode and it's working.

This isn't the 2013 Pittsburgh Penguins, a team that had the best offense in the NHL during the regular season. It's the 2013-14 Red Wings, a team that had the 20th-best offensive output in the regular season and had just one 20-goal scorer as some of its best players missed long stretches due to injury.

Still, results are results, and right now they're the same that they were last year for the B's: Three games in, two goals allowed to the opponent. Detroit has one win where Pittsburgh had none, but the Red Wings are suffering a similar offensive fate.

In figuring out why the Red Wings can't score, you can start with the fact that Zdeno Chara has been on the ice for the vast majority of Pavel Datsyuk's shifts. Even with Mike Babcock having last change and the opportunity to match Datsyuk's line against David Krejci's line rather than Patrice Bergeron's, Chara was still on the ice for 14 of Datsyuk's 22 five-on-five shifts in Game 3. Detroit made more of a push and got chances in the second and third periods, but Tuukka Rask made all the stops he had to as he protected Boston's 2-0 lead until Bergeron added to it.

With Chara taking away Datsyuk, Detroit needs its other scorers, such as regular-season leader Gustav Nyquist and linemate Tomas Tatar, to find the back of the net when they're playing against Boston's other blueliners. So far they haven't. They need to, but the Red Wings also aren't ready to count production from Datsyuk out.

"Obviously we need some other guys to generate. We were lucky to get Nyquist and Tatar to step up huge at the end of the year. I still don't think Chara can ever eliminate Pavel," Brendan Smith said. "I don't think anybody really can. Pavel had some pretty good chances and Tuukka made some good saves.

"I mean, he's going to do a great job. Chara's one of the best defensemen in the league and he's going to do a great job like [Niklas Kronwall] would do if he was on the opposite team, but you can't eliminate a guy like [Datsyuk]. He's just too good. You can do your best job of that and then we need other guys to step up as well, for sure. If I was one of their D I would be focused on Pavel, and that means someone else has more time and space. That guy needs to put the puck in the net."

The issue for Detroit, especially early in Game 3, is that the B's smoked them out in the Boston zone. Everything was kept to the outside, with strong looks at Rask hard to come by in a period that saw them only put four pucks on net. Even with more chances as the night went on, the Bruins still made it extremely difficult to get to the inside.

"We’re playing against good players and we’re all aware of that. Those guys are good," Babcock said. "I think Krejci and Bergeron are really good players. We’ve got some good players on our team, too. So, what I asked everyone on our team, ‘Is there anything they’re doing that’s making you compromise your game? If there is then do something about it.’ But this thing about standing around the outside, I thought our power play late in the game, we had entries last night no problem. I look up and they’ve got four guys on the inside and we’ve got one guy standing at the net and we’ve got four guys on the outside. You ain’t scoring like that, so let’s get involved in the game.”

Obviously the Bruins are facing a weaker offense than the Pittsburgh one they shut down last year, but you also have to consider that they had Dennis Seidenberg and Andrew Ference, two players they don’t have now. They’re seeing Dougie Hamilton – who was a healthy scratch for that entire Penguins series – play on the top pairing.

Then there’s the job the forwards have done. For all the love that Patrice Bergeron rightfully gets as being the best two-way player in the NHL, Boston’s other top two lines have premier two-way players in David Krejci and Loui Eriksson.

Krejci didn’t have to deal with Datsyuk in Games 1 and 2, as Claude Julien could put Bergeron out against him, which he did. Yet now that Babcock has last change, he’s freed Datsyuk from Bergeron but has seen the same results.

“We're very fortunate as a team to have both those guys and both those centermen. I do think that Krej sometimes, it does get lost how good defensively he is,” Iginla said. “He's led the league a couple years in plus-minus. That's a big accomplishment. At home, it would be Bergy's line shutting down and on the road, a lot of times they try to avoid Bergy, so Krej gets the scoring lines and he's done a good job.

“Getting a chance to be a winger playing with him, you appreciate it because you don't spend nearly as much time in your zone, chasing and being tired out from that. He's very smart. He's strong, too. It's not just his stick and stuff. He likes the physical side of it, too, and gets some big hits with it.”

Yet for as good as Boston’s forwards are at coming back and contributing to the team’s shutdown style, Chara remains the straw that stirs the drink. The Red Wings refuse to use the “we’re playing against Chara” excuse, but three games in, they’re still trying to figure out how to beat him.

"I think for a lot of years -- and not being biased -- just playing against him, I think he's the hardest D-man to play against in the league, shutdown," Iginla said. "The way he reads the game, how strong he is, how long his reach is, he can play it a lot of different ways and he's hard to get by. He's a mean guy, too, on the ice. He's a great guy off the ice, but on the ice you can see he plays with that edge.

“He's a tough competitor, so there's no question that whoever lines up against him knows it's going to be a battle and every little inch you get, you're going to earn it. It is nice to be on his team and not be against him. That's someone that every time in and you're going to play them, you're 'Oh OK, that's who I'm lining up against tonight,' and you know you're in for a battle."

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